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Rennes 2008 Actes Proceedings 22 e CONGRÈS DE LA SOCIÉTÉ INTERNATIONALE ARTHURIENNE , 22 nd CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL ARTHURIAN SOCIETY Rennes 2008 Actes Proceedings Réunis et publiés en ligne par Denis Hüe, Anne Delamaire et Christine Ferlampin-Acher POUR CITER CET ARTICLE , RENVOYER À L ’ADRESSE DU SITE : HTTP :// WWW .UHB .FR /ALC /IAS /ACTES /INDEX .HTM SUIVIE DE LA RÉFÉRENCE (JOUR , SESSION ) IS MERLIN ALWAYS RIGHT? Some months ago I was watching a BBC television programme from Glastonbury. The presenter, setting the local scene, said, “The Holy Grail came to the attention of King Arthur.” That set me thinking: yes, we know it did – but where and when? How much is Arthur prepared for events at the beginning of the Vulgate Queste ? In this paper I want to combine the question with a look at some points made by Richard Trachsler in Chapter Two of his book Clôtures du cycle arthurien .1 Chrétien’s Perceval doesn’t return to report on his quest, so Arthur lacks even the Hermit Uncle’s limited explanation. 2 In the First Continuation, Gauvain is keen to tell Arthur about finding his son, not about his Grail visit.3 Throughout the Prose Lancelot , various characters are given information, but not all report back to Court, and even they can be selective. Lancelot does tell Arthur about the Grail quest to come, the Good Knight, and the occupation of the Perilous Chair, details which are repeated by the hermit at the very end of the Lancelot .4 However, nowhere do we hear anyone tell Arthur what the Grail is, and why he has found himself presiding over a Round Table with a Perilous Chair in the first place. There is a controversial part of the Robert de Boron cycle, which has long suffered from the manner of its editorial presentation. This is the “link” passage leading from the Merlin into the text known as the Didot- 1 Richard Trachsler, Clôtures du cycle arthurien: Etude et textes , Publications romanes et françaises 215 (Geneva: Droz, 1996), Ch. 2, “Perceval, Sire del Graal. Du Conte du Graal au Perceval en prose,” 33–65. 2 Chrétien de Troyes: Le Roman de Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal , ed. Keith Busby (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993), vv. 6387–6431. 3 William Roach, ed., The Continuations of the Old French Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes. Volume I: The First Continuation. Redaction of Mss T V D (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1949, repr. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1965), see Introduction, lx, summary of Episode 8, for the line numbers of the manuscripts in which the episode occurs. 4 Lancelot , ed. Alexandre Micha, Vol. VI (Paris and Geneva: Droz, 1980), CI, 3; CVIII, 16. POUR CITER CET ARTICLE , RENVOYER À L ’ADRESSE DU SITE : HTTP :// WWW .UHB .FR /ALC /IAS /ACTES /INDEX .HTM SUIVIE DE LA RÉFÉRENCE (JOUR , SESSION ) ACTES DU 22 e CONGRÈS DE LA SOCIÉTÉ INTERNATIONALE ARTHURIENNE, RENNES , 2008 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22 nd CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL ARTHURIAN SOCIETY , 2008 Perceval , or the Perceval en prose .5 Could I suggest we call it the cyclic Perceval , to avoid confusion with the 1530 printed prose Perceval , and so that we can use the terms Didot (BnF, nouv. acq. fr. 4166, ex Didot) and Modena (Modena, Biblioteca Estense, E.39) strictly for the two cyclic manuscripts themselves, with their many differences? Here I must refute my own first publication, in which I claimed that the Robert de Boron cycle was the work of a single author. 6 I now believe that the three sections, Joseph , Merlin , and Perceval , were composed by three different people. 7 The story told by the Merlin ends, in Alexandre Micha’s edition, immediately after Arthur’s coronation, with the statement that he held the kingdom for a long time in peace. 8 Knowledge of the legend would have indicated that this was hardly the case: in Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace there are Saxons to be fought very soon, 9 and the Merlin author seems to be closing his own work in a way that invites continuation. Some scribes, when making additions, revised to indicate that all was certainly not peaceful: for example, Yale 227 (leading into the Vulgate Merlin Continuation) has “Et tient le roiaum[e] de logres mes ce ne fu mie longement em pes,” 10 while Didot changes more neutrally to “lonc tens mult amplez”. 11 It was also, 5 The Didot Perceval : According to the Manuscripts of Modena and Paris , ed.William Roach (Philadephia, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1941, repr. Geneva, Slatkine Reprints, 1977) (= DP hereafter). The “link” passage is included in Appendix A, 281–307, but begins during lines 235 (Modena) and 417 (Didot) on p. 301. It is also published in Robert de Boron, Merlin : Roman du XIII e siècle , ed. Alexandre Micha, Textes littéraires français (Paris and Geneva: Droz, 1980), see Appendix, 293–303. Micha discusses arguments relating to whether the “link” passage belongs to the Merlin or the Perceval in his Étude sur le <Merlin> de Robert de Boron: Roman du XIII e siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1980), 19–24. 6 Linda Gowans, “New Perspectives on the Didot-Perceval ,” Arthurian Literature 7 (1987): 1–22. 7 Linda Gowans, “What did Robert de Boron really write?,” Arthurian Studies in Honour of P.J.C. Field , ed. Bonnie Wheeler, Arthurian Studies 57 (Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2004), 15--28. 8 Robert de Boron, Merlin, ed. Micha (see n. 5), §91, l. 58. 9 Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of De gestis Britonum [Historia Regum Britanniae ], ed. Michael D. Reeve, trans. Neil Wright, Arthurian Studies 69 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), see 192–201. Wace’s Roman de Brut, A History of the British: Text and Translation , ed. and trans. Judith Weiss, Exeter Medieval English Texts and Studies (Exeter: Univ. of Exeter Press, 1999, revised edn. 2002), see 226–37. 10 http://webtext.library.yale.edu/beinflat/pre1600.ms227.htm 11 DP , 301. The scribe’s amendment may not make the best sense, but it does seem to indicate an awareness that “en peis” was not necessarily fitting, even though the cyclic Perceval does not commence with rebellion and war. 17 JUILLET , SESSION 2-L2, MERLIN PAGE 2/11 IS MERLIN ALWAYS RIGHT ? LINDA GOWANS presumably, desirable to rejoin the mainstream Arthurian legend by publicising Arthur’s royal birth. 12 It is hard to believe that the phrase “for a long time in peace” would originally have been instantly followed by an account of events later the same day, which is what happens in the “link” passage, and that is just one of the reasons why it seems unlikely to have been an ending to the Merlin , and is more probably the start of the cyclic Perceval . The manuscripts don’t help, as neither Didot nor Modena has a paragraph break either at “amplez”/“en pais” (respectively) or at the division made by William Roach, which I shall discuss shortly. The passage tells how Merlin joins Arthur and his barons at court, immediately announces Arthur’s true parentage, and (in the spirit of the Merlin ) leads Arthur to reaffirm Keu’s appointment as seneschal. The barons tell Arthur that Merlin made the Round Table in his father’s time, and they advise him to honour his father’s prophet. Merlin calls a private meeting with Arthur, Keu, and Gauvain, and explains the connection between the Round Table and Joseph’s Grail Table. He then reveals a prophecy about Arthur’s destined rule of France and Rome, stressing that Arthur must first ensure the Round Table is exalted in the way he is about to tell him. Merlin then goes into more detail about the Grail, revealing that it had been brought by Christ to Joseph in prison. He explains how Moÿs had persuaded Joseph to allow him to occupy the vacant place at Joseph’s table and what had happened as a result, and that the Grail is now in the West with the sick Fisher King, who cannot be healed until a knight of the Round Table has become the most renowned in the world and has asked the right questions, after which the enchantments of Britain will cease and the prophecy will be fulfilled. All will come to pass, providing Arthur plays his part. Merlin, rejecting Arthur’s plea to stay, returns to Northumberland, leaving Arthur thoughtful. Here Roach, followed by Bernard Cerquiglini, 13 makes his break between the Merlin and the Perceval , but it is an awkward one, and not only because Merlin’s words have a close relationship with 12 This is known from the start in the Prose Lancelot ; see Lancelot do Lac: The non-cyclic Old French Prose Romance , ed. Elspeth Kennedy, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), I: 3. 13 Le roman du Graal: Manuscrit de Modène, par Robert de Boron , ed. Bernard Cerquiglini, 10/18, Bibliothèque médiévale (Paris: Union générale d’éditions, 1981), see 197. 17 JUILLET , SESSION 2-L2, MERLIN PAGE 3/11 ACTES DU 22 e CONGRÈS DE LA SOCIÉTÉ INTERNATIONALE ARTHURIENNE, RENNES , 2008 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22 nd CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL ARTHURIAN SOCIETY , 2008 what is to come, relevant to no other continuation. The passage that follows (quoted below) encapsulates Arthur’s qualities and subsequent fame. It leads, especially closely in Modena, into the account of Alain le Gros’ death and Perceval’s arrival at court, so that Roach has to print the Modena passage twice, once in his appendix giving the link passage, and once at the very beginning of his edition of the Perceval . Here he (but not Cerquiglini, who presents the whole Modena manuscript in sequence) has actually removed “Et” from “Et saciés bien”: Et saciés bien que onques rois ausi grant cort ne ausi grant feste ne fist comme fist Artus.
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